tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23485237245684091272024-03-19T03:50:17.765-07:00Daniel Coffeen, PhD: Of StrategySan Francisco • daniel@joyfulcomplexity.comDaniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-37355485031534984512014-10-18T17:37:00.002-07:002014-10-18T17:42:23.842-07:00Branding is PrioritizingThe fact is every product, every business, does lots of things. And no doubt we could conceive of a world in which advertising entailed listing all your features and functions and benefits and people could decide if your product was right for them. But there are a lot of products and brands vying for people's attention. Which means your product only has so much time, so much opportunity, to be heard. This is a question of knowing when and where to speak to people, a classic marketing question. And it's a question of knowing what to say, which is a question less of marketing <i>per se </i>than of branding.<br />
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The instinct of most business owners is to talk about <i>everything</i> their product does, all the features, possibilities, and benefits. <i>It does this and this and this and this and will save you money, be reliable, high quality, with great customer support, too! Use it and you'll see!</i> I know; I've been that business owner. After spending months and months on developing my product, after thinking about it day and night, dreaming about it, waking up in the night to scribble some revelation, it's hard not to want to show it all off. </div>
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But people don't want to hear all that. They<i> can't </i>hear all that. They're inundated all day long with brands and products screaming at them, not to mention their bosses, spouses, friends, kids. It's your job, then, not just to make the right product, not just to approach people at the right time, but to know what you should say in the small window during which you have their attention. You don't have time to list everything. If your audience doesn't hear what it needs and wants to hear, it will tune out.<br />
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You need to know what to say first, what to hit home with, what to let linger. You need to prioritize.</div>
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It's not easy. Everything in you is screaming: <i>But we're not just fast! We're also really, really smart! And, in the long run, we'll save you money and headache! </i>Alas, you can't say all that — not at first, not all at once.</div>
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English, like most languages, is linear. Something — some word, some idea — must come first. So what do you say first? What's the lead idea? What is that idea and feeling and knowledge you want them to walk away with? Performance? Smarts? Friendliness? Safety? Value? Coolness?<br />
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This demands that you say <i>No</i> to many aspects of your product that you may love. So it goes. You can talk about it all you want once you have their attention. Then they're all ears, or at least some of them are. But if you try to speak really quickly to get it all in, to try and say it all at once, it's going to come out gobbledygook.<br />
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To brand is to prioritize. </div>
Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-60521980956431471562011-04-04T09:10:00.001-07:002011-04-04T09:10:40.869-07:00Brands in the Age of AgilityAll brands today face a new challenge: the speed of technology and market change demand a certain agility. But too much change by a brand and, well, it's not a brand anymore as it runs the risk of losing its customers doing things the customers just don't believe. Too little change and the brand loses its audience to new brands.<br /><br />Digital brands, of course, face this in a much more real way as digital fads and technology change almost daily.<br /><br />Many digital brands move quickly — growth and loss come often and fast. But what dictates the terms of that change? How can a brand construct itself so that it maximizes flexibility — allowing it to adjust, to enter new markets, to launch new experiences — while still offering a coherent vision?<br /><br />One strategy is to create sub-brands and let the master brand move into the background to a greater or lesser degree depending on the kinds of experiences it creates. Creating sub-brands — brands that are related to the master but not subservient, if you will — give the brand permission to address specific markets with different kinds of products and messaging. EA, for instance, created EA Sports with its own tagline, its own sub-mark, its own advertising, etc.<br /><br />Archie Comics found itself cornered and then did an interesting thing: it superseded its brand through irony, making an obsolete vision relevant to a new market. But this is a difficult thing to achieve and I think only worked because it had such cultural currency to begin with. IBM, of course, did a similar thing, moving from hardware to services. But, again, that was a brutal slough for the company.<br /><br />One strategy, then, is to build a brand that is predicated on a vision of life, of the kinds of experience it believes in, rather than on products. If IBM had started as a "smarter planet" company, moving from hardware to services would have been much easier.<br /><br />The problem is that few companies take the time to foster a vision. They have a product — wooohooo! — and take it to market — wooohoooo! And next thing you know, that product has come to define the brand. Meanwhile, the C-suite never stops to think because the company is making money. But they're not looking ahead to the change that is both inevitable and imminent.<br /><br />Without a sound strategy, the brand runs the risk of making decisions that leave it in a corner where it loses permission to change.Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-56857954550891879002011-03-11T20:02:00.001-08:002011-03-11T20:14:45.225-08:00What is Innovation in Medicine?: UCSF Telemedicine Website<a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://telemedicine.ucsf.edu/"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 322px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsESNuJUSMAGjRseaQ2KfW9ZbqhjS7J9ky1FHA4Q8I51KhFh5LszFjUUHWmv0rOlksjS0pqGgFYAHjA6MzsmjuvrGCjARHrUDxwxGiUY3QoNaltyXKYjLvR_nuXegUZ3sK4GA7LMJAATYO/s400/Picture+1.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5583038971827364978" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is a site for which I did the positioning, architecture + navigation, and wrote all copy, including the blog posts (I co-produced the video, as well).<br /><br />While the site may not seem like the sexiest, hottest experience, its position and claims are actually quite radical as many doctors at both institutions — UCSF and SFGH — are really thinking about medicine and technology. Which, in turn, made me think about it.<br /><br />Here is one blog post from the site about design thinking.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: georgia;" href="http://telemedicine.ucsf.edu/telemedicine-blog/what-innovation-medicine">What is Innovation in Medicine?</a><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />When we think of innovation in medicine, we think of breakthroughs in research, in drug treatments, in procedures. But we don't think about the patient's experience. We don't think about how best to deliver healthcare. And yet seemingly simple gestures such as making specialists available to the underserved via </span><a style="font-family: georgia;" class="glossary-term" href="http://telemedicine.ucsf.edu/glossary/2#term69"><dfn title="Real-time, usually two-way transmission of digitized video images between two or more locations.">video conferencing</dfn></a><span style="font-family: georgia;"> can save innumerable lives and have tremendous impact on quality of life. </span> <p style="font-family: georgia;">So much of medicine turns on information and communication. Researchers speak with other researchers; doctors speak with other doctors (or they should); professors speak with students; students speak with each other, with doctors, with patients; patients speak to doctors; patients speak to each other. From one perspective, medicine is a vast network of information communication. </p> <p style="font-family: georgia;">To state the obvious, we find ourselves amidst an explosive revolution in how information is communicated. <a class="glossary-term" href="http://telemedicine.ucsf.edu/glossary/2#term62"><dfn title="Phone, cellular, cable, the Internet, the Web — any electronic-based communication system that transmits voice, data, and/or video.">Telecommunications</dfn></a> have done more than dramatically recast how we do business; they have dramatically recast the very way we relate to each other, to information, to the world. </p> <p style="font-family: georgia;">And yet medicine, conspicuously, remains way behind this revolution. </p> <p style="font-family: georgia;">Consider, for a moment, the number of deaths and injuries suffered with doctor misdiagnosis or treatment. This is not to blame doctors per se; medicine is complex. But that's all the more reason to enable doctors to share information, to communicate with each other. Think how many deaths and injuries can be avoided if doctors speak with each other, if they share their respective knowledge, expertise, and experience. </p> <p style="font-family: georgia;">At UCSF, Dr. Pierre Theodore, a thoracic surgeon, is creating a web-based collaboration tool that will allow doctors across disciplines to work together on a patient case (starting with tumor boards). The business world, of course, is overrun with competing collaboration tools. But in medicine, there is a conspicuous dearth — even though such an application can save lives and dramatically improve patients' quality of life. </p> <p style="font-family: georgia;">The medical community needs to rethink what it considers innovation. Of course breakthroughs in understanding diseases and drugs and treatments are necessary. But we need to think about how we deliver our findings, how we deliver our expertise, how we actually deliver healthcare. </p>Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-73762208441403300552011-02-18T10:01:00.000-08:002011-02-18T10:13:04.198-08:00SoDA 2011 Digital Marketing Outlook: Designing Digital Intimacy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjohWS77dd7cR0LMm5QopgxVktKYHtvsXTEmoo7C8boi7ZZnjuLPVCqJgQPNSwu7KjUD85t86GEb2aoQMDqMbOx8MvtkqcVYfLz29DUrPjTevHzrKffOcEnCWAPkE1om2SGAd7gCJ1E6Y4-/s1600/Picture+1.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 243px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjohWS77dd7cR0LMm5QopgxVktKYHtvsXTEmoo7C8boi7ZZnjuLPVCqJgQPNSwu7KjUD85t86GEb2aoQMDqMbOx8MvtkqcVYfLz29DUrPjTevHzrKffOcEnCWAPkE1om2SGAd7gCJ1E6Y4-/s400/Picture+1.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575092191261844370" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/sodaspeaks/society-of-digital-agencies-soda-2011-digital-marketing-outlook">Society of Digital Agencies 2011 Digital Marketing Outlook</a><br /><br />I wrote an article for the SoDA 2011 DMO on "Desgining Digital Intimacy" (p. 80). But there's lots of good stuff in there. Here's the article:<br /><br />The new digital platform is intimately entwined with our lives. It’s with us in the morning when we rise, by our side as we drive and stroll and lounge. It tells us where our friends are and converses with us when waiting for a bus. Even when silent, it is always navigating the ether as we dine, socialize, work, sleep. It is an active participant in our daily lives.<br /><br />Computing has become more than a screen we look at. It is tactile experience ripe with vibration and a plethora of telling signals. And it demands to be touched. Our fingers play across it with a knowing feel, much as we scratch an itch.<br /><br />In <span style="font-weight:bold;">The Medium is the Massage</span>, Marshall McLuhan argues that technology is an extension of the human body — the book an extension of the eye, the wheel an extension of the foot, electric circuitry an extension of the central nervous system. The mobile computer is at once a neural and physical appendage scanning the environment for signs much as our eyes and nose scan for sights and sounds. It is always on, always “looking,” pulling in data, making sense of it, and sending signals to the brain via sound and vibration. It is quite literally an extension of ourselves. <br /><br />The promise of the Internet has hence shifted from being an exhaustive archive of media to being alive, immediate, proactive. While we may still go to websites to survey media, computing has become an encounter, a conversation, an event.<br /><br />As computing entwines itself into our most private spaces, it forges, foments, and facilitates intimacy. Consider FaceTime and the casual ease with which a traveling parent shares his or her journey with children — “Look, this is my hotel. Isn’t it cool? And look: you lost a tooth.” And the parent can actually look into the anxious eyes of his or her child, providing comfort from across the country. <br /><br />Or <a href="http://chatroulette.com">Chatroulette</a> and the way strangers put themselves into immediate conversation with each other. It creates what McLuhan calls the global village, the world folded onto itself as a mother in Milan sits face-to-face with a banker in Bangkok, an investor in Ireland stares into the living room of a developer in Dubai. The hesitation some of us feel towards Chatroulette stems precisely from the power and palpability of this disappearance of boundaries, this sudden intimacy.<br /><br />Or consider a dinner party, guests enjoying wine, cheese, crackers while the host, still cooking, chats and prepares, the iPad proffering the recipe and dj-ing the music, a glimmering participant in the gathering. Now that’s social media. <br /><br />Or all the uses in telemedicine as a dermatologist in San Francisco examines the rash on a woman in Eureka. Now that’s intimate.<br /><br />This digital intimacy shifts the very terms of how we engage people. We are no longer creating experiences off in the distance, on some website sitting on a server somewhere. We are now creating experiences that live in people’s pockets, in their beds, in their hands and always top of mind. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">The question is: How can we create relevant, engaging, experiences? How can we create intimacy between our brand and our consumers? Here are some things to consider:</span><br /> <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">For whom is this intimacy? </span><br /><br />• Is the interaction between your brand and an individual? EZface Virtual Mirror Application, for instance, lets a person see what she’d look like with certain beauty products applied, certainly an intimate relationship between a brand and a consumer. <br /><br />• Your brand and a group? Thinks of flash mobs that mobilize a group in a way that remains quite intimate. <br /><br />• Or between individuals via your brand? Applications as simple as video chat rooms let people connect face-to-face with each other, the brand silent in the background (think: fan sites). <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Go to them.</span> Don’t make consumers come to you. Go to them. Push content — relevant content, that is. Which means knowing what they want and, as important, when and how they want it. Which leads us to the next point….<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />But don’t over do it.</span> Use good manners. No one likes telemarketers interrupting their dinner. <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;"><br />Engage the body</span>. Move past eyes to engage faces, fingers, and voices. Digital kiosks in public spaces can use face recognition software to engage people smartly, delivering utility and/or delight. See the <a href="http://www.sapient.com/en-us/SapientNitro/Work.html#/?project=157">SapientNitro/Unilever</a> ice cream machine in which people are invited to smile and, if their smile is big enough, they “win” an ice cream.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Make it live.</span> The new digital environment is immediate, live, turning on the promise of the dings, rings, and vibrations of smart phones. Design for the now. The entire interaction with the ice cream vending machine is live, sensing when someone is close, inviting the person closer, and using face recognition software to determine gender, age, emotion. The point is this: engage people, start a conversation, create events here and now.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Serve the now — with utility, whimsy, and delight.</span> The digital has moved from the archive to the now. So what can you do for your customers right now? Suggest a place to eat in the neighborhood. Or perhaps what’s most tasty on that menu. Or how the food one’s eating fits with his diet or health needs. Or perhaps tell them a joke, a quote, a story. The question is: How can you fit into the living moment?Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-65986721412874970522011-01-16T12:12:00.000-08:002011-01-16T12:23:39.215-08:00On Brands, Stories, and ArgumentsThere is a lot of talk these days about storytelling as an essential part of branding, of the brand experience. Frankly, I am often confused by how this word "story" is being used.<br /><br />A brand is always and necessarily an argument of some sort — buy this because....it's good for you, it makes you feel cool, it's inexpensive, it's nice — and, more often, because it's some combination of these things. In rhetorical terms, an argument always has three intertwined components: ethos, pathos, and logos.<br /><br />- Logos is the logical argument: Buy this as it works better and costs less.<br />- Pathos is the emotional argument: Buy this because it's cool.<br />- Ethos is the argument of the speaker: Buy this because <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">I</span> am cool.<br /><br />An argument links disparate things together; it makes sense of the varied components of a brand's offering — its logical, pathetic, and ethical components. There are many ways to construct an argument, many ways of linking things together, many ways of making sense. That is what a brander does for a living: he, or she, puts it all together in a coherent and compelling manner.<br /><br />A story is one kind of argument, one way to link things together. Story turns on narrative, on cause and effect, and often on conflict such as good vanquishing evil (clean vanquishing dirt, liquid vanquishing thirst, etc). This may be simplistic, especially if we're discussing literature and its many approaches to story (think of Jorge Luis Borges' strange, beautiful "stories"). <br /><br />But the point is this: story is one mode of argument. Sometimes, story is appropriate. Sometimes, it's not. What is always appropriate is a compelling argument.Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-24346753997057701612010-09-11T13:54:00.001-07:002010-09-12T14:55:13.140-07:00The New Platform is Relentless ReinventionWe live in a time of relentless technological change. The web as we know it, barely 15 years old (if that), is pronounced dead. Platforms vie — Windows, Linux, Android, Apple — as do languages — Flash, HTML5, and so on.<br /><br />While there are some standards, for the most part, standards are up for grabs.<br /><br />Blogs, those dense textual renderings, once so revolutionary now seem passe.<br /><br />Games and movies begin to resemble each other.<br /><br />The means of marketing have shifted — web banners, web experiences, the social, branded utilities, complex configurations of integrated campaigns.<br /><br />Business models morph, adapt, disappear, explode — sellers, rellsers, auctioneers, platforms, apps, amalgamators, curators: they come, go, borrow and steal from each other.<br /><br />But it is a mistake to think this will settle down, that there is a war to be won, that a plateau will be hit. No, these are the conditions of digital technology: relentless change, constant innovation. It is the very nature of the beast. The digital — the computational — is a medium of constant reconfiguring. That's what it does.<br /><br />Welcome to the new media world, a place of relentless reinvention.<br /><br />It's hence a mistake to ask: What's the next big thing? The question is: How do I invent another thing?Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-4543080354938073522010-08-20T08:17:00.000-07:002010-08-20T08:50:52.995-07:00In this new media world, who runs strategy?Brand agencies, web agencies, digital agencies, ad agencies, PR agencies, media agencies, package design agencies: In this ever shifting world of new media, who dictates strategy?<br /><br />There are not only multiple touch points — each with its own technology, reach, function, and metrics — the very notion of the touch point is shifting. Where marketing was once purely a matter of seizing people's eyes, ears, and attention, it is now a matter of insinuating a brand into people's lives. It's no longer just ads or banners or websites or viral videos; it's useful iPhone apps, interactive kiosks, and websites that talk back. <br /><br />And, perhaps most importantly, it needs to all be integrated: TV needs to speak to billboards which need to speak to web which needs to speak to the guy Tweeting for you which needs to speak to apps — and vice-versa and back again. Everything needs to speak to everything.<br /><br />I worked for an agency in 2000 that claimed to be integrated — web, print, advertising, marcom, brand, naming. But, of course, we were better at some things than at others. And, even if we were good at everything, our clients just couldn't see it that way: we were a web shop, those guys did brand, those other guys did print. <br /><br />So while an integrated agency sounds great, it's a difficult thing to pull off. The reality is that that web has very different demands in terms of knowledge and staffing than TV advertising does and these are different than branding and naming and those are different than media buying and then there's packaging and POS displays and store design. <br /><br />A truly integrated agency that does everything equally well poses certain insurmountable obstacles.<br /><br />But this doesn't mean the thinking can't be integrated. The question, I think, is this: Who owns that nexus? Who sees all the moving parts? Who runs strategy? <br /><br />I did a gig for a media agency several years ago and they felt they were in the best position to dictate strategy. After all, they sit at the juncture all media, that place where different touch points intersect. I could see their point.<br /><br />I've worked with digital agencies who feel they're the ones to do it. The world is digital now. And understanding the digital is really understanding how people interact with a brand. It seems natural to move from digital thinking to strategic thinking. So why not let the digital shop run strategy? Makes sense to me. <br /><br />Then there's the branding agency, the place that specializes in strategy. In many ways, this makes the most sense: Set the brand strategy and let it cascade down through everything else. There is no doubt that the brand agency is in a unique position to dictate strategy. And there's no doubt that having a good brand strategy is an essential ingredient — fundamentally, what does the brand want to accomplish?<br /><br />But does this mean the brand agency is the owner of the integrated strategy? Does it have a deep understanding of the web, of digital, of advertising and of how they all intersect? Perhaps. <br /><br />Maybe it's a matter of agency collaboration, an always sticky undertaking. <br /><br />Maybe it's not a matter of digital vs. brand vs. media but of this agency vs. that agency. This brand agency gets digital; that digital agency gets brand. Go with one of them. <br /><br />Or maybe the new role has yet to emerge. And maybe this role is not agency-side but client-side, a great conductor of the media orchestra, not a CMO, not someone who knows the numbers but someone who knows media <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> strategy, someone who understands trees while seeing the forest.Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-15982903957220870062010-08-06T21:12:00.001-07:002010-08-06T21:42:12.414-07:00Don't Simplify. Articulate Complexity.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxvX5h3fq_GdyvYUDoCWeo8whXMqn6r3WucrjpvbyiUDMKxfuBYc3mEAW2gp73HLoiJ8MiqeXLt_nVnhIA2TMV3gH7a0u9jbrlRx-fh1LVn6hYSj6HbALLjALvRntbGJLX6S4djC6hSVlj/s1600/Picture+3.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 213px; height: 201px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxvX5h3fq_GdyvYUDoCWeo8whXMqn6r3WucrjpvbyiUDMKxfuBYc3mEAW2gp73HLoiJ8MiqeXLt_nVnhIA2TMV3gH7a0u9jbrlRx-fh1LVn6hYSj6HbALLjALvRntbGJLX6S4djC6hSVlj/s320/Picture+3.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5502522699771484066" border="0" /></a><br />Often, we encounter clients whose brands or desires seem overly complex — decentered messaging, random use of logos, sites that try to do too much, copy that tries to say too much. And we imagine it our job to simplify this complexity, to wipe away the excess, to reduce the noise. And we tend to call this simplicity. Indeed, simplicity is a mantra among designers.<br /><br />But I want to suggest that these are false and misleading terms. What we encounter is not complexity; it's confusion. When we do our job well, we prioritize, organize, and distribute. We lend shape to the shapeless, form to the formless, sense to the madness. Sometimes, if not often, this means eliminating unnecessary or confusing components — wordy paragraphs, noisy web sites, murky icons.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">But this work is not <span style="font-style: italic;">simplifying</span>. It's <span style="font-style: italic;">clarifying</span>. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">It's our job to articulate the complexity of a brand as best we can — the networked milieu of employees, leadership, history, consumer desires, future needs, the competitive landscape. And to do so in a way that is at once clear, organized, meaningful, and delightful. </span><br /><br />The simplicity/complexity dichotomy is a strategist's and designer's red herring. It is our job to give eloquent voice to the complexity.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7FsQCtLjInb6_HEPb5NIjpsCYB4C4Zyz_FtsyexIbcGQve8LcOOAW2PyeKfJbd-ZnV8ft0h28wgiuMSPFUMMHwQjXXLjPBS5tgN09KFguSt_H37WW99uVD8HG7BARwr_wc1IffTeh47uf/s1600/Picture+4.png"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 295px; height: 41px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7FsQCtLjInb6_HEPb5NIjpsCYB4C4Zyz_FtsyexIbcGQve8LcOOAW2PyeKfJbd-ZnV8ft0h28wgiuMSPFUMMHwQjXXLjPBS5tgN09KFguSt_H37WW99uVD8HG7BARwr_wc1IffTeh47uf/s400/Picture+4.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5502522997401961458" border="0" /></a>Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-76296239777427423432010-03-25T20:43:00.000-07:002010-03-26T10:05:07.465-07:00What is Brand? People doing thingsIt seems that all too often companies approach their business reactively or in a vacuum: they create something and then figure out how to sell it. The first step in this selling, they imagine, is developing a brand. What should we look like? Sound like? What are we promising? What makes us different? What do we need to say to sell our goods?<br /><br />Indeed, this is how most branding engagements go. <br /><br />But what if these companies considered people in the world, what they do, what they've done, and what they will be doing in the future? It would be productive and profitable — for the company and for the world — if the brand was less a way of selling something than a way of enriching people's lives through actual experiences.<br /><br />Hence, rather than asking how best to position their goods, a company would ask how best to fit into the complex, networked lives of individuals. Look at the Prius. Toyota was so far ahead of the curve because they actually considered their product in the real world, in its network of energy, fuel, politics, personal desire. <br /><br />Or the obvious example of Apple who over and over again consider how people interact with technology and the world. They don't invent something and then figure out how to sell it. They figure out how to create behaviors, actions, and experiences that suit the lives of individuals and cultures. They don't as much create a technology and brand it; they create behaviors, experiences, that enrich, empower, excite, satisfy. <br /><br />I know, I know: this seems so obvious. And yet we find ourselves doing the same old branding engagements: here's our product, says the client, how can we position it to sell more? They don't ask: how does our product fit into the ever shifting landscape of the interaction of people and technology? They don't ask: what's changing in the way people think, interact, desire, work, live, love, experience?<br /><br />A brand engagement should not just entail writing a positioning statement with a list of attributes. A brand engagement should craft the architecture of the experience of an individual in the course of a life, in a network of other people, things, experiences, desires, and possibilities. <br /><br />A brand, then, is not just the way a company speaks. It is not just an architecture of attributes. A brand is an architecture of experience. A good brand enhances, enriches, empowers, redefines the way people actually do things.Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-73794515125408537152010-02-24T07:47:00.000-08:002010-07-28T09:24:57.146-07:00New Architectures of the Social Web: On ChatrouletteIt was not until I experienced <a href="http://www.chatroulette.com/">Chatroulette.com </a> that the issues with Facebook were brought into such relief. Facebook is premised on the old concepts — what's your name, your job, who are your friends, what do you like and dislike. That is, its questions of identity are the old questions, its answers the old answers.<br /><br />There is little new in Facebook; it simply accelerates what already is. It's an easy to use phone book, mailbox, and bulletin board. Of course, this acceleration changes things. But not so dramatically. <br /><br />Chatroulette changes the very architectures of the social. It asks new questions and demands new answers. It is no longer: Who are you? Rather, it's: What do you want from others in this moment? <br /><br />By stripping away the meta-narrative — your name, your place, pictures of your friends, your status — Chatroulette introduces the unmediated encounter. There is nothing to buy. Brands are banished and with them, the pyschographic identities we use to assess others. There is nothing to do here; just the experience right there before you on the screen. You will not hook up or meet at a party. You will engage and be engaged. Or not.<br /><br />There is an incredible intimacy here as your living room is turned inside out. Suddenly, there are strangers walking through your home. And this is scary and erotic, a whiff of the dangerous.<br /><br />And yet there is total anonymity. Just hit "next" or close the window and your living room is your living room once again. <br /><br />Part of what makes it so scary is that it is one-to-one communication. There is no broadcasting your status; there's only engaging another individual. And yet the success of Chatroulette turns on there being a vast network, another person when you click next.<br /><br />This is a new architecture of the network: a collective of individual moments.Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-80141080832955893222009-11-22T13:12:00.000-08:002009-11-23T12:26:38.827-08:00Names of Social Networks and the Experience Architectures They EngenderConsider the names of social networks — MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Tribe — and how they inflect the experience of each site despite the fact that each site enjoys more or less the same functionality.<br /><br />MySpace is precisely that — a space for and by an individual. It is a user's space on the web, there for him or her to mark up, blog, spin. Sure, there are friends and hook-ups on MySpace but somehow Facebook came to own that function.<br /><br />Facebook references the old printed facebooks of collegiate yesteryear in which upperclassmen were given a book of the faces of the incoming class. A facebook is essentially social. It is a vehicle to interact with others.<br /><br />Hi5, too, is essentially social: a high-5 takes two, after all. And, like its name, it is a social activity for the young with a suggestion of the groovy. And such is the site: young and cool.<br /><br />Tribe, too, is social — but suggests nodes, groups, bound by common interests. And such is Tribe.com.<br /><br />All four of these sites do basically the same thing — profile pages, news feeds, messaging. And yet each offers a distinct architecture of that experience — leading into this room before entering that, emphasizing this feature and not that. <br /><br />And it is the name — among other factors, no doubt — that sets this all up, that inflects the experience just so.<br /><br />And in turn inflects the entire architecture of the experience — from what visitors expect to what the company develops. In the name, is a vision — like it or not.Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-23364977275859367432009-11-14T18:01:00.000-08:002009-11-14T18:26:42.170-08:00Naming and The Experience Architecture of a BrandA name figures a thing. We say "moon" which references the cyclical nature of that rock in the sky. The French say "la lune," speaking to the luminescence of the same thing. But is it the same thing? The French see light; we see cycle. Of course, they see cycle, too, just as we see light. And yet the different names figure the terms of the relationship to the thing.<br /><br />Recently, I've been thinking a lot about all the different ways you can spin a product or brand, the diversity of ways you can situate an offering. For any given product, and especially for interactive products, you can emphasize this or that component, construct the experience in this or that way. I call this the experience architecture.<br /><br />Now, everyone these days talks about building a relationship with consumers, building a dialog. And this is no doubt important. But what I've been thinking about are the different ways you can construct the terms of this relationship — the terms of the promise, of the delivery, of the effect and affect of the thing.<br /><br />Any product has multiple qualities — a sneaker may be comfortable, light, sturdy, cool, chic, expensive, inexpensive. A brand chooses to emphasize some of these components, not all of them (usually). Take Volvo and Mercedes. Mercedes is the safer car and yet safety is not what Mercedes emphasizes. Volvo takes safety. <br /><br />In the grand scheme of things, this is arbitrary — Mercedes could just as easily "own" safety. But it doesn't. Why?<br /><br />Well, there are a lot of reasons. But I want to suggest that one main reason is that both of these companies have a clear vision — a clear experience architecture — of their respective brands. They may do all sorts of things but the clarity of their visions set the terms of the dialog with their customers.<br /><br />So now it's time to name something. I look over the brief. It tells me the name should be fun, memorable, short; it tells me the benefits of the thing I'm naming — it makes life easier, safer, healthier; the brief tells me we want to suggest something dynamic yet easy to use.<br /><br />But what the brief doesn't tell me is the architecture of the experience. For instance, does this thing coddle me? Or is it there when I need it? These are two fundamentally different postures — always there vs. actively nurturing. <br /><br />In interactive software, these architectures can become quite complex. Is the product a cockpit for the user to drive his way through the web — Pilot.com? Is it a magnet that draws things in and lets the user organize it all — Magneto.com? These can describe the same functionality but they describe two very different visions of the experience: moon vs. la lune. <br /><br />It's my job to name the thing. It hence becomes my job to cast the terms of the experience architecture. I wonder, however, if at least part of such a discussion shouldn't come earlier, shouldn't be driven by the vision of the stakeholders? <br /><br />What is your vision of how your product interacts in the world? What is your vision for how your product shapes experience? What is the relationship between information, time, human bodies, human desires? <br /><br />I almost think companies should start by mapping their visions, how they imagine their products interacting and distributing the different elements. This, I believe, would help make a brand, an experience, and a dialog with consumers more powerful and more effective.Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-19438472613117139012009-10-13T19:46:00.000-07:002009-10-18T20:22:36.272-07:00The Rhythm of your Brand: On PunctuationPunctuation provides the meter for written language. It tells us when to start and stop, when to linger, when to await a dramatic flourish (it can even whisper an aside).<br /><br />The space — between words, between paragraphs — is perhaps the most basic punctuation, telling us when words start and stop. Space lends coherence, visually and conceptually. Otherwisethingscangetmessy.<br /><br />The semi-colon is so exquisite; combining both a period and a comma, it marks a full stop <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> a pause.<br /><br />The colon, two big spotlights, dramatically declares: heed this.<br /><br />Commas, often over or under used, can temper an idea.<br /><br />Where would we be without the question mark? It is an open invitation to the reader.<br /><br />And, oh, the exclamation point! It can lend poignance and passion to even the most quotidian of utterances.<br /><br />The dash — perhaps like the parentheses (yet without parenthetical discretion) — lets us flesh and flush out what might have been too thin.<br /><br />The right punctuation, in the right place, can make language falter or sing.<br /><br />What's the meter of your brand? What's its rhythm?Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-46146766568773901972009-10-13T19:19:00.000-07:002009-10-16T07:38:19.097-07:00Words Perform a BrandSometimes, when we say something, we're doing something else entirely. For instance, what happens when I say, "I'm cool"? Well, I've established that I am, in fact, not cool: to say you're cool means you're anything but.<br /><br />Words never solely state. Words <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span>. They <span style="font-style: italic;">perform</span> all sorts of functions: they excite, provoke, tantalize, assure, inspire. They confuse and obscure; they enlighten. <br /><br />A writer tends to his performance as much as he tends to his words. Say you're naming a product that is supposed to be easy to use. You can find a word that means easy — "simplio" or "eezee." But you can also create a name that is easy to say, easy to think, easy to use: "Wawa."<br /><br />The trick to creating powerful language for a brand is to make the words perform the brand, to make the words <span style="font-style: italic;">be</span> the brand, not just <span style="font-style: italic;">state</span> the brand.Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-20324551222565424602009-03-01T12:37:00.000-08:002009-10-13T20:25:46.250-07:00Professional OverviewI am a strategic writer and strategist who is equally comfortable developing a distinctive brand voice, articulating a vision, writing a white paper, finding the right name for the right thing, or creating some impossibly succinct tagline.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Extensive experience as senior copy writer and namer—web, print, ads, white papers, decks, speeches</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Extensive experience as brand strategist and for breadth of companies</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Award-winning Information Architect (Comm Arts, ID, ASCI, among others)</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Founder of ArtandCulture.com and 10Plums.com—a social network and social media app, respectively</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• PhD in Rhetoric from UC Berkeley<br /><br /></span>Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-86666829410180059692009-03-01T12:35:00.000-08:002009-10-13T20:31:20.442-07:00Experience<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Writer, Namer, Brand Strategist </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Self-Employed, 1998-present</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I interview stakeholders, develop a brand position, delineate the goals and rhetorical milieu, and then write what needs to be written.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Johnson&Johnson/Neosporin: Wrote and co-developed future growth vision</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Odopod: Worked with agency to develop brand and create name for client</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Universal McCann: Developed position and copy for relaunch of corporate site</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Organic: Wrote brand position book aimed for mass audience distribution</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• VideoEgg: Developed position, tagline, and copy for relaunch of brochureware</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Salt Branding: Created names for a range of clients and products </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Dialhouse: Wrote presentation to explain a Fortune 500 company’s brand semantic usage</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Catalina Marketing: Developed sales materials for world’s largest targeted marketing firm</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Clorox: Created names and brand concepts for proprietary product</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Founder</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >10Plums.com LLC, September 2008-February 2009</span><br /><a href="http://10plums.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">10plums.com</span></a><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Conceived concept, developed architecture, and oversaw production of web 2.0 social utility application</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Founder, Chief Product Officer</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><a href="http://www.artandculture.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/ACLive.woa/wa/home">ArtandCulture.com</a>, August 2006-September 2008</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Conceived and raised seed round for arts based online social network. Conceived all functionality; wrote functional specification documents and wireframes; wrote positioning papers</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >In-House Writing Coach + Knowledge Sharing Officer</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><a href="http://www.stoneyamashita.com/website.html">Stone Yamashita Partners</a>, 2003-2005</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Performed audit of everyone's writing; developed specific strategies for each person. Created and wrote the agency's first knowledge sharing tool set</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Director of Writing and Research</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Progrexion (now <a href="http://www.cicerogroup.com/">Cicero Group</a>), January 2001-2003; 2005-2007</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Created brand strategy, copy, and concepts for diverse client base, including </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Applied Underwriters (workers' comp bundled with financial services);</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> DIRECTVDSL; </span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Centex Homes; Covad; Lexington Law</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Adjunct Professor </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><a href="http://rhetoric.berkeley.edu/">UC Berkeley,</a> 2001-2008; <a href="http://sfai.edu/">San Francisco Art Institute</a>, 2002-2006</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Taught composition, argument, and critical thinking to undergraduates. Taught introductory lecture and upper division electives in critical theory</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Manager of User Experience</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" ><a href="http://answerthink.com/">Answerthink Consulting Group</a>, 2000-2001</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Created site flow, site maps, wire frames, page maps, and functional specifications for clients, including: Catalina Marketing; an educational science site/CD ROM aimed at kids for Dow Chemical; an interactive web site developed around Levi's Re-Engineered Jeans</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Managing Editor </span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >ArtandCulture.com, 1998-2000</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">• Oversaw production from seed idea to full implementation of multiple award-winning web site: Communication Arts Award for Info Design, ID's Silver Medal for Interactive Design, SXSW's Best Online Cultural Experience and Best of Show, Art Director's Award, among others</span>Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2348523724568409127.post-47962366855785951772009-03-01T12:32:00.000-08:002009-08-20T17:35:20.999-07:00Education + Personal Interests<span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Education</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />• PhD, Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley, December 1998</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />• MA, Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley, Fall 1994</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />• BA, History & Literature, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, Spring 1991. Cum Laude. Honors</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Personal Information + Interests</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">My passion is philosophy, particularly 20th and 21st century French and German philosophy. But my focus is usually the pleasure of deploying these philosophies in interpreting particular objects—art, film, books, martini glasses. For the past several years, I’ve written widely on contemporary art, film, and new media, contributing essays to the Tate Museum as well as to numerous art magazines and gallery catalogs. I recently wrote an article on the different things I’ve learned from eating Uni (as in the sushi, raw sea urchin gonads—<span style="font-style: italic;">yum!</span>).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /></span>Daniel Coffeenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03912050391869734890noreply@blogger.com